Your Daily Walk with The Great Minds: Wisdom and Enlightenment of the Past and Present, Pocket Edition

Your Daily Walk with

The Great Minds

Wisdom and Enlightenment

of the Past and Present

Pocket Edition

Richard A. Singer Jr.

The Spiritual Dimensions Series

Your Daily Walk with The Great Minds: Wisdom and Enlightenment of the Past and Present, Pocket Edition

Book #6 in the Spiritual Dimensions Series

Copyright © 2007 Richard A. Singer, Jr. All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

First Edition: February 2006

Second Edition: February 2007 (a.k.a. Workbook Edition)

Pocket Edition: February 2007

ISBN-13 978-1-932690-27-9

ISBN-10 1-932690-27-1

Published by:

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

USA

http://www.LovingHealing.com or

info@LovingHealing.com

Fax +1 734 663 6861

L o v i n g     H e a l i n g     P r e s s

Praise for

Your Daily Walk with the Great Minds

"I have spent my life studying lots and lots of self-development books and I can say emphatically that Your Daily Walk with the Great Minds ranks in the top ten. I whole-heartedly recommend this book to any seeker of self-development."

—C. Kumarbabu, MD, PhD. Former head of Dept. of Psychiatry, Stanley Medical College Hospital, Chennai, India.

"Your Daily Walk with the Great Minds is a highly intimate and engaging philosophy and very strongly recommended for its invaluable grasp of worldly study and in-depth analysis of the surrounding experience."

—Midwest Book Review

Mr. Richard Singer has written a lovely inspirational book filled with heart… This wonderful book can only add to and enrich your life.

—Barbara Rose, Ph.D. Author, If God Hears Me, I Want an Answer

The author did not create an inspirational tool, but a sagacious wormhole for extraordinary change by combining valuable elements sparking synergy. A must-have book, destined best seller, and powerful vehicle ready to fly. Recommended.

—Mindquest Review, by Lightword Publishing.

"More than simply a daily meditation, Your Daily Walk provides priceless pearls of wisdom, meditations, and opportunities for personal journaling. This gem of a book is a wonderful traveling companion throughout the year, offering opportunities for spiritual growth and enrichment. I highly recommend it."

—David J. Powell, Ph.D., Institute of Mental Health, Beijing Medical University

"Mr. Singer’s masterpiece offers a path to shape your day and dares you to risk and grow—to meet your true potential. If you thirst for true meaning in life, Your Daily Walk with the Great Minds by Richard A. Singer, Jr. is a necessity. Highly Recommended."    —Sue Vogan, BookPleasures.com

This is a powerful book, a tool for inner peace. For those who are looking to make a change, or just a journal to enjoy, for those who are into learning from the teachers in their lives along their chosen path and for those who have never given spiritual growth a single thought, this book is for you. Enjoy it, give it as a gift, and watch the transformation of humanity.

—Heather Froeschl, BookReview.com

Our true self is often suppressed due to the many distractions life thrusts upon us. Mr. Singer has embarked on a mission that can awaken us, daily, in the pursuit of liberating who we are and what we can become. This book will inspire you to accomplish beyond the limits you have currently set for yourself and help you see who you really are.

—Scott L. Taylor, Author, The Opportunity in Every Problem

This outstanding book guides the reader toward the sunlight of the spirit. This book is a must read. Thank you Richard, your book has truly touched my spirit, and I know it will reach the hearts of many people.

—Dr. Katie Evans, Therapist and Author of Addiction and Trauma Related Books

I think it’s an excellent gift to yourself or to anyone on your list who is intentional about personal growth and spiritual development. I can only hope that Mr. Singer creates more versions of this wonderful concept so that a reader can fill several volumes over the years.

—Ron McCray, The Tao of God

Many of us are familiar with the great thoughts and thinkers in the personal development field, but we need to be inspired every day if they are to have any lasting effect on our lives. Your Daily Walk provides exactly this inspirational service in an easy to use and practical format that will help people to stay focused on what they want from life.    —Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help Classics

This book is dedicated to all of humanity.

Each human being that walks this earth is just

as valuable and precious as the next.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by David J. Powell, PhD

Introduction

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Author Index

Subject Index

Suggested Reading

Acknowledgments

In the words of the brilliant writer Paulo Coelho, When somebody wants something the whole Universe conspires in their favor. This is an accurate description of the process of this book. First and foremost I must express my gratitude for the eternal and all-loving Universal Source that has allowed me to bring this book into the world in order to help the transformation of humanity. Secondly, I must thank my entire family, without them I would not be the person I am today. They also labored endlessly to promote the first edition and genuinely believed in me.

I also have incredible gratitude for the initial book reviewers and authors who gave my work a chance and had faith in me as a writer. They are: Heather Froeschl, from BookReview.com and Quilldipper.com, Sue Vogan, from BookPleasures.com, Larry Hehn, Author of Get the Prize: Nine Keys for a Life of Victory, David Powell, Author of Playing Life’s Second Half, Tom Butler-Bowden, Author of 50 Self-help Classics, Ron McRay, Author of Tao of God, Theresa Peluso, Co- Author of Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul, Scott Taylor, Author of The Opportunity in Every Problem and Dr. Barbara Rose, Bestselling author of If God Hears Me, I Want an Answer!

Additionally, I need to express my gratitude for those authors and reviewers who did not have time to review my work. You are more important than anyone else because you challenged me to persist with passion and determination. Thank you for your help in my personal growth process. Finally, I must thank Loving Healing Press for becoming involved in the growth and success of this book. It will have a lasting effect on countless lives.

Foreword by David J. Powell, PhD

The secret of a good book is that it reaches into the reader’s heart and touches him/her at a deeper level. You, the reader, know when the words on the page are true, for they have always been true for you. I knew that. I guess I’ve always known that, is the response we give when we connect words with the heart. Anne Lamott says, Good writing is about telling the truth. Good books help us pay attention to and communicate about what is truly going on for us in life, what is Truth.

Good books also communicate the wisdom of the sages through the ages. Some age-old wisdom sustains us through the hours, days or years of sunshine that lights up our lives. Some wisdom is aimed at the cold dark places within, the water under the frozen lakes of our lives. These are the times when we need light and encouragement. The Buddha said that life is 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Either way, the wisdom of the ages shines on the secluded, camouflaged holes of our lives, helping us to step and live through the brambles of our life.

Life is like a giant recycling machine. The wisdom learned from other people’s life dramas gets recycled back across time. The good wisdom of the ages is already out there, waiting to be told and received in fresh, new and wild ways. Mark Twain said that Adam is the only person that could be 100% certain that nobody before him had done or said what he did or said. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we have been recycling the wisdom of the ages, which gives us new light and life as if we are hearing it again for the first time.

Wendell Berry, the curmudgeon Kentuckian poet, describes this process wherein we, after all these years, find something that makes sense to us, again, but as if we’d never heard it before:

Sometimes hidden from me

In daily custom and in trust,

So that I live by you unaware

As by the beating of my heart,

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

A wild rose blooming at the edge

Of thicket, grace and light

Where yesterday was only shade,

And once again I am blessed, choosing

Again what I chose before.

How does that happen? Truth and wisdom have a way of harvesting and integrating the joys, sorrows, glories, mediocrity, and even evil of a lifetime, transfiguring everything. Wisdom goes before and behind us, breaking through and consuming into life the dyings of a lifetime.

Wisdom of the past lights up the spiral path of life, which, for most of us, is largely unmarked and not easy to follow. Wisdom gives us the light to allow us to transform our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we transmit it. So, what transforms pain? I have come to see that transformed people transform people. They offer us a vision of a new set of values, a deeper understanding of ourselves, a greater appreciation of our own innate and acquired wisdom, and most importantly, a deeper capacity to love.

So what transforms people then? Sometimes change happens when something appeals to our intellect. Sometimes we change when we learn a new skill or an idea. We always change when we are confronted with love that is conveyed to us in the silence and sounds of others. Love always transforms people.

So, good books and sound wisdom (prior and present) convey to us a deep abiding presence, a sense of a hidden wholeness. Thomas Merton spoke of this as returning to our true self. Buddhists call this our original nature. Quakers named it our inner teacher. Jews through the ages have spoken of this as the spark of the Divine. Psychologists speak of our identity and integrity. I will call it our soul that yearns to be rooted in something else that tells us the truth about ourselves and our world. It gives us life. T.S. Elliot said,

We shall not cease from exploration

and the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started

and know the place for the first time.

True wisdom does not seek to fix anything. In it there is no saving, no advising, and no setting the person straight. True wisdom simply holds us faithfully in a space where we can listen to our inner teacher and find truth. It offers us an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted within and around us, with passion and an air of discovery.

In this process of transformation, a response is required of us. What are our thoughts, meditations, and emotions as we hear the words of wisdom of the past? At some point we are asked, How do you feel about that? Writing down our responses through journaling, we engage in a spiritual discipline. Journaling is not the same thing as a simple diary of activities, a systematic listing of events. Journaling asks us to record our reactions to the words of wisdom, chronicling the spiritual odyssey we are taking, day-by-day and hour-by-hour. Journaling provides us a means of meditation wherein we become engaged in the conversations with the authors of the wisdom.

There is something in the physical act of writing that releases our creative responses and leads to self-understanding. Regularity in journaling is essential as a way of providing us structure, form and consistency to our meditations. The time for journaling is less important than the regularity of it. Ideally, it can become a daily practice. The first step of journaling is to relax into the space, to prepare ourselves for the spirit that is at work within us, drawn out by the wisdom we’ve read. We need to breathe deeply, finding ways of our own choosing to clear our mind of other things so that the words can wash over us, like the cascading waters of a morning shower.

A disciplined form of growth comes as daily readings. Your Daily Walk with the Great Minds by Richard A. Singer, Jr. offers a daily guide and disciplined way to allow the wisdom of the past and present to wash over us, allowing the reader to enter his inner spiritual world and to reflect on how he responds to this wisdom. This book can transform your life, especially if you accept the daily discipline of reading, relaxing, and reflecting on the words.

Your Daily Walk is packed with the wisdom of great minds, from Dale Carnegie to Anton Chekhov, from great thinkers like Euripides to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Einstein to Thomas Edison. It gives us the thoughts of Henry David Thoreau to Harriet Beecher Stowe. We follow the ideas of great poets from Walt Whitman to Robert Frost. This gem of a book moves us through the diversity of words from people such as Henry Ford, Sigmund Freud, Vince Lombardi, Mahatmas Gandhi, Aristotle, Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, St. Augustine, Mother Teresa and John Paul Sartre. It encompasses the wisdom of writers as diverse as Hindu and Buddhist texts, the Jewish Talmud, and philosophers ranging from Lao-Tzu and Confucius to Milton Berle.

The wisdom encapsulated in this book can transform your life, especially if you soak in the words and practice the daily discipline of journaling and meditation, as the book allows. This is a gem filled with daily opportunities to grow, for its words are true. They will resonate with your head, heart, and soul.

—David J. Powell, Ph.D., President International Center for Health Concerns, Inc.

Institute of Mental Health, Beijing Medical University,

Author of Playing Life’s Second Half.

To learn more about Dr. Powell’s noble achievements visit his web site at www.ichc-us.org.

Introduction

Words are the physicians for the mind diseased.

-Aeschylus

I have been chosen by a much higher source than myself to unveil the components of my successful life transformation with those who are receptive to it across the globe. The specific books, quotations, meditations, affirmations, and journaling segments expressed throughout this book had the power to raise me up from the streets and transform me from a homeless drug addict in desperate pain to a successful human being living the life of my dreams on a tropical island in the Caribbean.

I am providing you with my foundation for healing which was inspired by the energy of this vast and miraculous Universe. Each quote, meditation, journal, and affirmation is meant to be applied each specific day of your life and in each exact situation that you encounter. Absolutely nothing happens in this world by coincidence and the same goes for this daily guide for personal growth and transformation. These daily guides will synchronize your soul with your desired journey of success and align you with your universal purpose. If you allow yourself to remain mindful of each moment you will certainly witness the synchronicity and perfection of the sacred puzzle of your life. Everything in your life fits together in harmony with the Divine Source of being.

Most collectors collect tangibles. As a quotation collector, I collect wisdom, life, invisible beauty, souls alive in ink.

—Terri Guillments

This book is not meant to be read like a traditional self-help book. A majority of the self-help books that we read are quickly discarded by our minds and never genuinely applied to our life’s journey. This book is a daily guide for personal growth and genuine, spiritually grounded success for you and the world around you. Each day you will enter the inner world of one of the Universe’s most influential minds and be gently guided to living a life your higher-self desires for you and a life of immense contentment and peace. This book contains basic principles that will transform your life and assist in your journey of success and prosperity.

An added benefit is the profound effect it will have on those human beings around you and the world as a whole. The changes you make will benefit the entire Universe. Thus, the world will be changed by each person practicing the principles of this book one day at a time. My hope is that enough people will choose to apply these principles diligently and persistently in order to bring about a tremendous and astonishing change in the world around us. With much effort, humanity will begin to change one day at a time. Remember, keep your thoughts in the day and be mindful of every moment that you experience. This approach is centered on the now, which is all we have. The daily quote, meditation, your personal journaling, and the affirmation will guide you on your journey each day and will align your life with the blueprint imbedded in your soul. Trust in this, believe in this, and conscientiously practice this daily program and you will be amazed at what you will achieve in your life and who you will become. I wish you the best on the most influential journey of your life. Pass this book on when finished, recommend it, and give it as a gift. I cannot wait to see the transformation that this book has on your life and humanity as a whole.

Each night I go to sleep I die and the next morning when I wake up I am reborn again.

—Gandhi

This daily guide combines strategies and personal growth techniques to most effectively help you transform your life. These strategies and techniques have been shown in recent research to enhance the change process when individuals have the internal desire to do so. I will briefly describe these specific aspects of the guide. My hope is that you can utilize them in order to maximize the change in your life and increase your ability to transform humanity.

1. Modeling: The quotations from these great minds will give you the opportunity to do what they did to achieve maximum success and greatness. You have the ability and capacity to believe what they believed, think how they thought, and to live how they lived. You